Best and worst MMO communities

I recognize this thread will be based on opinion and personal experience, but I'm curious to know what people think of various MMO communities. Here are my thoughts:

Best:
LOTRO - I can't think of a bad player experience in this game, and people always seemed very willing to help. Also, everyone seemed to respect the lore even if they didn't roleplay (ie, nobody running around with dumb legomyeggolas names.)

Great:
GW 2 - the open world event system I think encourages good cooperation and the holiday events bring people together in ways I haven't seen in other games. There's also a lot of server pride in WVW though rivalries can get ugly.

Good:
SWTOR - mostly ran into nice players but the solo nature of class stories made it hard to get groups.

Worst: WOW
As excited as I am for the expansion, almost every session I feel I run into more douchebaggery. Lots of killsteals at lower levels and PUGs are the worst. I know it's a great game if you have friends but the leveling process is really brutal thanks to elitist a-hats.

Your takes on LOTRO and GW2 mirror my own, though GW2's world events would get nasty whenever it was clear the event was going to fail.

Toss-up:
Marvel Heroes - The game is very solo friendly, so your primary interaction with the community is the social chat channel. The only form in-game trolling can take is high level characters going to a low level area and killing things before others can get to it, and even then, it's usually not done specifically to troll but because they outlevelled the are they're in. The bad news is that this is an MMO based on comic books, so the trolls tend to be the worst combination of Gamer and Comic Fanboy. The good news is that the people in your social channel are likely not on the same map as you, so even if someone in your chat is being a jerk, you're very unlikely to see them in-game. The ratio of helpful people to trolls in social chat is pretty good too. PUGs are completely unnecessary. You get credit for kills regardless of how much damage you did, and all loot that drops is player specific. More good news is that the devs take communicating with the players very seriously, and are very active on their forums (which approximately the same ratio of helpful players to trolls as the in-game community does)

I felt WoW before the first expansion was probably the best MMO I've ever played, but most of that was due to GWJ Alliance being really active, and a small group of us staying close in levels to do instance runs as a set group. Outside of the guild was always pretty bad, but over the years a lot of people have lost interest and moved on, while the ones that stayed were the epic fanboys of the game that will dismiss you for not being as l33t as them.

I still play Asheron's Call here and there (they eliminated the subscription for the game, and just set a $10 fee to create or unlock an account, and you get access to AC2 as well), and I was surprised to find I was still a member of an active community that looked after each other. For a game that's coming up on 20 years, that was amazing for me.

Overall I've stopped playing MMO's because I just got tired of always feeling behind the curve, or late to the game, because I couldn't devote all my time to them.

PurEvil wrote:

I felt WoW before the first expansion was probably the best MMO I've ever played...

Overall I've stopped playing MMO's because I just got tired of always feeling behind the curve, or late to the game, because I couldn't devote all my time to them.

Completely agree. I'd pay a monthly fee to have old school WoW again. Also, there's no way I could get good enough to compete at a high level again, just not enough time or patience any more.

I still miss my first online community, the Atlantic shard of Ultima Online. For the first few years it was really something special.

I'm probably vastly overgeneralizing here but it seems any 'free' MMO that comes from Korea/China/Japan usually has the worst communities. I believe that's because it's just a bunch of kids and teenagers. I'm sure there's some examples of where that isn't the case but I've yet to experience it. Going on to that any free to play game is going to get a lot of bad eggs. I know you listed SWTOR as being good but that just might be because you were sharded into a low population area. Get on one of the fleets with 200+ people and you'll see some vile stuff.

I will second Guild Wars 2 being fantastic. Final Fantasy 14 is hit or miss depending on the server but still overall I would call good. Black Desert Online was pretty decent at launch, not sure how it holds up now.

IMO, restricted communication in an MMO kills any sense of community. I'm still good friends with people I met in Star Wars Galaxies, and that's because I could not only talk to my side, but the "enemy" side as well. Such a system allows espionage and yes, trash talk as well. But trash talk creates tribes, which are strong communities. It gives you a common, true "enemy" rather than impersonal interaction with the other side.

I understand why developers of popular MMO's can't do it, though. They always have language restrictions and enforcing those on a massive scale like WoW would be impossible (and, more importantly, expensive!) if you had heated rivalries.

I had totally forgotten about Star Wars Galaxies and Asheron's Call. I dabbled in both games and found the communities to be great, though in AC I sometimes got the cold shoulder because I didn't have a sponsor (or patron can't remember. I just remember asking questions and people telling me to go ask my sponsor.)

jdzappa wrote:

I recognize this thread will be based on opinion and personal experience, but I'm curious to know what people think of various MMO communities. Here are my thoughts:

Best:
LOTRO - I can't think of a bad player experience in this game, and people always seemed very willing to help. Also, everyone seemed to respect the lore even if they didn't roleplay (ie, nobody running around with dumb legomyeggolas names.)

Great:
GW 2 - the open world event system I think encourages good cooperation and the holiday events bring people together in ways I haven't seen in other games. There's also a lot of server pride in WVW though rivalries can get ugly.

Good:
SWTOR - mostly ran into nice players but the solo nature of class stories made it hard to get groups.

Worst: WOW
As excited as I am for the expansion, almost every session I feel I run into more douchebaggery. Lots of killsteals at lower levels and PUGs are the worst. I know it's a great game if you have friends but the leveling process is really brutal thanks to elitist a-hats.

Accurate overall in my experience. WOW wasn't that bad for me but I also played the game very casually.

Yeah, finding a good guild is pretty much key to WoW.

That said, I'd actually put a different game into worst: WildStar

Like the PUGs are occasionally stupid, but generally still work together in WoW to get stuff done. WildStar's ranking system for your group performance in instances means you have a lot of folks who will drop the moment Gold is off the table... which means people really have problems even finishing a single instance once to learn them so they can get better and try to go for gold later.

Demosthenes wrote:

Yeah, finding a good guild is pretty much key to WoW.

That said, I'd actually put a different game into worst: WildStar

Like the PUGs are occasionally stupid, but generally still work together in WoW to get stuff done. WildStar's ranking system for your group performance in instances means you have a lot of folks who will drop the moment Gold is off the table... which means people really have problems even finishing a single instance once to learn them so they can get better and try to go for gold later.

Wow that sucks. I was thinking about coming back to Wildstar at some point but now not so much.

The best and worst community I would say belongs to Eve Online. You have a community that allows and accepts scamming, lots of crap talk, lots of ganging up on people and animosity between corporations (which are like guilds).

Yet, someone will die in real life that played the game and their corpmates will start a fundraiser to send that person's kids to college. Things like that are amazing to me.

Doctor Charm wrote:

The best and worst community I would say belongs to Eve Online. You have a community that allows and accepts scamming, lots of crap talk, lots of ganging up on people and animosity between corporations (which are like guilds).

Yet, someone will die in real life that played the game and their corpmates will start a fundraiser to send that person's kids to college. Things like that are amazing to me.

I believe it can be said that EVE is in a category by itself (it consistently is one of the highest rated games by its participants of MMOs).

I agree with Wildstar being bad, just for the game mechanics promoting conflict in both group PvE and PvP.

Yeah, one of the things that burned me out on Wildstar quickly was the way that - to anyone at all familiar with general mmo "communities" anymore - the game was built to promote toxic intra-party conflicts (premade groups aside).

Prior to the first expansion, Heavensward, the community in Final Fantasy XIV was great. People were consistently helpful and knowledgeable or else just silent. When Heavensward released, there was a huge influx of new or returning players who were often awful. All the sexist, homophobic, condescending, elitist crap MMOs are usually notorious for came flooding in along with them. I don't know if that's died down as server numbers have normalized after the expansion rush; I stopped playing.

World of Warcraft was a very frustrating experience as a completely new player. It was obvious that everyone else knew the early areas well and were prepared to speed through them as quickly as possible. I constantly had critical quest monsters killed by someone who zoomed in on a motorcycle (always a motorcycle), hopped out, killed the monster, and left, which made some quests very difficult to complete. More than anything, though, whole areas were simply depopulated of certain enemies or items that needed to be killed or collected because there were so many players going after them at once. I blame the structure of the game more than anything.

Elder Scrolls Online was bizarrely lonely for an MMO. I played on console where the only option for chat was voice chat. I switched that off early, and after that, other than seeing other players milling around, there was no interaction with anyone else. I felt like I was playing a single-player game alongside a number of other players. When I did turn on voice chat, it was usually a couple of guys chirping away at each other and no one else. I get the impression it's a more connected and lively game if you start it with a group of friends; if you don't, I don't know how you'd ever meet anyone.

I haven't dedicated myself to an MMORPG since FFXI. There were some really bad people back then but that was more than offset by genuinely helpful players. I haven't found an experience that's managed to equal or better FFXI even with the modern niceties most of them come with.

I did play FFXIV before Heavensward but since I'm in Australia and on US servers it would be impossible to find PUGs to finish content. I remember stalling out before I hit level cap. I don't recall the community but I do recall gil spamming was pretty bad in general chat.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

World of Warcraft was a very frustrating experience as a completely new player. It was obvious that everyone else knew the early areas well and were prepared to speed through them as quickly as possible. I constantly had critical quest monsters killed by someone who zoomed in on a motorcycle (always a motorcycle), hopped out, killed the monster, and left, which made some quests very difficult to complete. More than anything, though, whole areas were simply depopulated of certain enemies or items that needed to be killed or collected because there were so many players going after them at once. I blame the structure of the game more than anything.

This was really annoying in the early WotLK days for me.

Some might like to know that with Legion, certain bosses, elites, and quest mobs now allow up to 6 or so now have no tagging (anyone who gets a hit in gets credit for the kill). This is in place now and is glorious.

I would wholeheartedly agree with the assessment of EVE Online's community.

It is truly a bastard simulator, but even in the midst of that brutality, I found -- at the time -- a large alliance of incredibly welcoming people. Newbros and gals without a clue will find themselves suddenly rich in their eyes (the practice is so frequent it's known across the game as "showering them with ISK"), and with multiple people down to spend a good hour or so to teach them about the game.

At the upper levels, I learned of the various IT heads of major alliances having their own secret group to help each other keep their auth systems secure and to keep the game running.

Our coalition, which included our more progressively-leaning alliance to the notorious anti-PC folk whose identity you can probably guess, was at one point led by the head of a smaller alliance who was a transgender woman, and woe unto the person who attacked her.

But every community in EVE dances on the edge of a knife. It can always go wrong so very, very quickly. It's why I've found that CEOs of major alliances who go longer than 18 months without stepping down for at least a significant break burn out hard and lead to problems.

Yet despite all that, meet the vast majority of dedicated EVE Online players outside of the game and you'll find people who just love playing with other people.

It's just a mess of contradictions and even my feelings on it are contradictory. I miss the game quite a bit, but I'm relieved I'll never play it again.

Eve Online is going free soon I'll happily check that one out.

I played vanilla Lineage 2 way back in the day and loved the community. I remember running around the starter town and meeting new people who would lend you a helping hand or party up with you to grind out a couple levels.

I haven't dabbled into many other MMOs but Age of Wushu sticks out to me as one of the more unfavorable communities. The chat was riddled with a ton of trash talk and things got really personal on their forums.

Maybe it's just the growth of the internet that's ruining these communities? I played L2 back in 2004 and AoW in 2014...or maybe I'm just getting old!

Well, to be fair, vanilla WoW was released in 2004, and Barrens Chat is legendary for how bad it was. Given the timing of my own family, I know that WoW was released right around 10 years after we initially got dial-up, and having internet access at that time (1994) wasn't exactly the norm. So 2004 would be around the earliest time you started getting teenagers in online games who literally grew up with internet access.

Generally I find that if one plays tank or healer in any mmo where you don't have enough free time or energy to be the best and know every fight of every dungeon/raid/whatever and ungh... while the same the same jerks lament dps queues and the lack of tanks and healers.

That said I really really enjoyed tanking ffxiv prior to the expansion, after which I doubt I'll ever login again for reasons clock mentioned (well that and if one takes a long break from an mmo getting back into it becomes rather daunting).

I don't usually encounter anything quite moba levels of toxic in mmos, thankfully, but I've certainly encountered toxic enough to be left wondering why I'm trying to progress in a game just so I can play with a bunch of jerks.